Life Form

The first comprehensive effort to identify and catalog every species in the world's oceans, from microbes to blue whales, is a year from completion. But early discoveries have profoundly altered understanding of life beneath the sea, senior scientists say. New tracking tools, for example, show that some bluefin tuna migrate between Los Angeles and Yokohama, Japan; one tagged tuna crossed the Pacific three times in a year.

There are pockets of bad-cinema fans who might conceivably be excited at what Roger Christian, director of the notoriously awful L. Ron Hubbard adaptation "Battlefield Earth," might have in store. The wait is over with the low-budget space horror flick "Stranded," co-written by Christian. It's about a four-person military moon station - led by a barking Christian Slater - that suffers "Alien"-like consequences after a crippling meteor shower brings a visit from a strange life form.

Danish scientists say they have found a new life form and that it occupies an unusual biological niche--living exclusively on the lips of the Norway lobster. The new creature is so unusual that it constitutes an entirely new phylum, a level of biological classification that currently has only about 35 representatives.

Could primitive extraterrestrial life have traveled the universe in tiny spacesuits and colonized alien planets? Perhaps, according to a team of Japanese scientists who used electron beams to turn insect larvae's natural secretions into a protective “nano-suit” that allowed the young bugs to survive in a vacuum for a whole hour. The nano-suit, a 50-to-100-nanometer layer that allowed the soft-bodied insects to survive a vacuum that should have instantly killed them, was described this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Innocence A Novel Louis B. Jones Counterpoint: 160 pp., $14.95 paper The plot of Louis B. Jones' new novel seems to promise an antic, postmodern free-for-all: A middle-aged former Episcopalian priest, now employed in Marin County real estate, takes a weekend tour of Sonoma wine country with his new girlfriend. Both have recently undergone surgeries to repair a cleft palate, both are sexually inexperienced, and both are grappling with issues of self-definition and identity.

One of the better-known quotes from the original "Star Trek" series came from Mr. Spock, who, in describing a space colony, said "there is no life .... at least no life as we know it. " That quotation is echoed in the breathless descriptions by scientists of a newly found bacterium, one that can digest arsenic instead of the phosphorus processed by other life forms. The organism was found in California's Mono Lake. The discovery was important in itself, but scientists were quick to extrapolate from it to speculate about what it might mean for extraterrestrial life.

John Lofton ("Craziness Among the Highest Order," Commentary, Sept. 14) wants to know why so many people concern themselves with the quality of life other than human, and states: "If anybody out there in the asylum thinks he or she has a lucid rationale for all of this moral madness, I'd love to hear it." OK. Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny. Life is life. What relates all (living) things is the fact that they live, not what they do with that life. The real "craziness" is the belief that any life form is greater or lesser than any other life form.

A 3.85-billion-year-old, green-and-white stone formation on an island near Greenland was once thought to contain the earliest known evidence of life on Earth, but a study suggests it formed from molten rock at temperatures too hot for life. A 1996 study concluded that rocks on the offshore island of Akilia contained a high ratio of the isotope carbon-12, which was interpreted as evidence of microscopic life billions of years ago. But a study by geologists Christopher M.

Albert Einstein once famously wondered whether God had a choice in how he created the universe. His unanswered question drives physics to this day. The same question could be asked about the biological universe -- especially now that the rover Opportunity has found signs of ancient standing water on Mars. NASA's search for alien life is based on the strategy "follow the water," and for obvious reasons. The only life we know is built on a scaffolding of carbon that floats in bags of water.

Beefy Constructions: Known for the delicacy of her paper and stick forms, the newest constructions of Ann Page come as something of a shock. Beefier, less kite-like, almost tuberous, at times they recall the pod shapes of Magdalena Abakanowicz. Fleshiness makes for intriguing, disturbing objects rife with bodily associations that seem to be mutating to some other kind of life form.

Innocence A Novel Louis B. Jones Counterpoint: 160 pp., $14.95 paper The plot of Louis B. Jones' new novel seems to promise an antic, postmodern free-for-all: A middle-aged former Episcopalian priest, now employed in Marin County real estate, takes a weekend tour of Sonoma wine country with his new girlfriend. Both have recently undergone surgeries to repair a cleft palate, both are sexually inexperienced, and both are grappling with issues of self-definition and identity.

Apparently, there just aren't enough genomes for Craig Venter to sequence here on Earth, so he's making plans to send a DNA sequencer to Mars. “There will be life forms there,” Venter said, with his usual confidence, at a Wired Health conference this week in New York. If he can build a machine to find it, the next steps would be to decode its DNA, beam it back to Earth, put those genetic instructions into a cell and then boot up a Martian life form in a biosecure lab. It may sound far-fetched, but assuming that there is DNA to be found on the Red Planet - a big assumption, to be sure - the notion of equipping a future Mars rover to sequence the DNA isn't so crazy.

The not-so-distant prospect that scientists will be able to create new forms of life in the lab raises ethical and safety challenges, but progress in the field should not be hobbled by premature restrictions, a panel appointed by President Obama said in a report to be released Thursday. The President's Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues acknowledged in its first report to the Obama White House that "do-it-yourselfers" ? individual scientists and small labs working without institutional backing or restraints ?

One of the better-known quotes from the original "Star Trek" series came from Mr. Spock, who, in describing a space colony, said "there is no life .... at least no life as we know it. " That quotation is echoed in the breathless descriptions by scientists of a newly found bacterium, one that can digest arsenic instead of the phosphorus processed by other life forms. The organism was found in California's Mono Lake. The discovery was important in itself, but scientists were quick to extrapolate from it to speculate about what it might mean for extraterrestrial life.

Woofing about Riordan Re "Unleashed," Opinion, May 8 Where was Hizzoner in taking on the unions when he was in a position to actually do something? If former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan had fought to reduce the pension promises to all new hires who started with the city during his eight years, we would not now be looking at the ballooning pension costs that may cripple the city's fiscal future. If Riordan, with tons of his own money to finance his political career, and ostensibly no further political ambitions, couldn't face down the powerful public unions, who can?

On a recent weekday morning, Tom and Jo Heindel strode to the top of a hill at the edge of town and held hands, savoring the panoramic views below of elk grazing in alfalfa fields, strips of willows along streams and elm trees glistening with the remnants of rain. Then Tom, 73, and Jo, 71, got down to business. "A few dozen scaup, 10 eared grebes, 12 Clark's grebes, 20 canvasbacks and a Northern harrier gliding low and fast," Jo said, peering through a spotting scope. "Got it," said Tom, transcribing the information on a tally sheet spread across the hood of their aging white mini-pickup truck.

David Glidden, in his essay (Opinion, Nov. 16), "Human Souls, Animal Lives: Who or What Needs Saving?" concludes that if we must be concerned about treating the other life forms on this planet with some respect, before we do away with animal vivisection for medical research, we should do away with McDonald's, fur coats, and leather shoes, belts and handbags. Glidden admits that his priorities are not metaphysically grounded, but rather represent an appeal to "reason" and "toleration."

There are pockets of bad-cinema fans who might conceivably be excited at what Roger Christian, director of the notoriously awful L. Ron Hubbard adaptation "Battlefield Earth," might have in store. The wait is over with the low-budget space horror flick "Stranded," co-written by Christian. It's about a four-person military moon station - led by a barking Christian Slater - that suffers "Alien"-like consequences after a crippling meteor shower brings a visit from a strange life form.

August 3, 2009 | Irene Wanner, Wanner has written for many publications, including the San Francisco Chronicle, the Seattle Times and High Country News.

Believe it or not: In the Arctic, some caterpillars freeze in autumn and thaw the next spring, none the worse for wear. Tiny willows struggle so hard to grow, they're shorter than nearby tundra grass. To keep warm, otters can have nearly a million hairs per square inch of skin. Bowhead whales burn 10,000 calories a day and can have blubber more than two feet thick.

The first comprehensive effort to identify and catalog every species in the world's oceans, from microbes to blue whales, is a year from completion. But early discoveries have profoundly altered understanding of life beneath the sea, senior scientists say. New tracking tools, for example, show that some bluefin tuna migrate between Los Angeles and Yokohama, Japan; one tagged tuna crossed the Pacific three times in a year.